Starsphere
-
I was just making a starsphere (simple sphere with a custom texture), exporting it to cmp and tried to view it ingame.
HardpointCMP views it properly, but ingame, the texture isn’t visible. So now I got two question:
1- Does a starsphere has to have a certain size?
2- May that bug be related to the faces normals? Can I make the cmp show the texture on both sides of the faces?Thx for any help in advance - I searched quite long for any existing thread, but all I saw was related to editing the existing starspheres.
-
This sounds a bit as it could be a texture problem.
If your textures are DDS try 2 switch 2 TGA.And maybe try 2 import a given starsphere into Milkshape
with the l8est CMP-Importer.
Change group + material names,
switch 2 your materials and export it.
Maybe the clone works. -
Open your starsphere file with UTF editor, root->material_library->your_texture->Type: set it to Nebula or NebulaTwo. Make sure to check the string after you’ve entered it, because sometimes UTF adds strange characters to the end of it. IF that happens, write the text into a .txt file and import it.
-
I was succesful in assigning the texture to an existing starsphere, deleting all other meshes and textures.
The only problem I got now is, that on the standard mesh, the texture is tiled, which I don’t really like.Will look if there’s any solution, any self-made sphere in milkshape doesn’t show the texture in the inside.
-
Sry for doublepost, but I can’t really solve my problem.
I either need to know how I can assign the material to the sphere being visible in the inside in milkshape or how to turn off texture tiling in the cmp.Thx for the help received till now, at least I experienced my first custom starspheres, even if they didn’t meet my expectattions due to the tiling.
-
Select the entire sphere and go into the menu and use ‘reverse winding order’. That will flip the sphere inside out.
-
It seems to be easier to play Freelancer than to mod it, still got no clue whats wrong with my selfmade-cmp.
I though noticed some differences in the utf.
left –> standard br_01 starsphere, background texture changed | right --> selfmade cmpHere is what’'s visible ingame (notice the tiling =/):
and when I put the custom one up:
Both use the same texture file.
Is there any step by step tutorial that would explain the cmps structure, or could anybody help me with the whole thing.
I just don’'t know what to test anymore, already tried to change the materials type, to add a cons node in the cmpd, neither worked.Much to learn I have
-
As for the Tiling aspect of this… tiling is done through UV editing / texture coordinates. If your mesh should only use a texture once, then make sure you keep the UVs within the single texture’‘s boundaries.
In Milkshape, with the mesh causing problems selected, hit Ctrl+T to bring up the texture editor. There’‘ll be a drop-down box where you choose the same mesh name. After that, the mesh’‘s UV points will be displayed and you can scale them, etc.
There’'s also a checkbox which will allow you to see your changes in real-time, in the 3D textured view pane.With starspheres, you’‘ll find that there are quite a few which are not a complete sphere at all. It looks like you’‘re using a texture that was meant for one of the sort of billboard portions of a starsphere. Soooo, you can remove faces that will not be needed, and edit the UV’‘s. That’'ll fix your tiling problem.
Milkshape does need some more work on showing face normals. In 3DS Max, you can opt to show normals and control how big a vector line is drawn from the center of the face. Unfortunately, there’'s nothing like that in MS3D
That leaves you with trying to see it in the 3d window. Normals facing away from you (no normal texture will be visible) will make the face show up entirely black. This can be hard to tell for sure if the smoothing groups are biffed up too, as SG’'s deal with how shadows are blended between faces.
So, select the faces in question, then click the Assign button on the mesh tab above smoothing groups, then pick a random number to assign those selected faces.Get in there and look around in the 3d view pane, with textures enabled. If you cant see jack but black inside, keep those faces selected and do as LS said (Ctrl+Shift+F) to “reverse vertex order”.
-
When u’‘ve exported a starsphere try to resize it with the FL model toold (resize by 1) diretly exported models are mostly invisible from a certain angle and startsphere’'s are totaly invisible till i resize them by 1.
Not sure what the error is even UTF editor could not tell me but the model tool will fix it.
